"I was a liar myself when I was a kid. I'm still a liar, really, and I don't mean just in terms of telling stories and being a story writer. I wouldn't ever want to be held to a literal version of the...
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Tobias Wolff provided a definition of the guiding principles behind his own stories in explaining his choices of the works of others for Matters of Life and Death (1983), the anthology of contemporary...
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In the following essay, Hannah discusses Tobias Wolff's representation of a veteran's reintegration into American society in “Soldier's Joy.”
“Soldier'...
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In the following excerpt, Bailey interprets This Boy's Life as a “meditation upon selfhood,” praising the style and narrative of the memoir.
Tobias Wolff's This Boy'...
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In the following excerpt, Desmond examines Wolff's preoccupation with liars in “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs” and The Barracks Thief, and comments on the influence ...
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In the following excerpt, Allen praises the stories in In the Garden of the North American Martyrs for their depth and power.
Tobias Wolff, whose In the Garden of the North American Martyrs is the bes...
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In the following essay, Hannah studies the twelve stories included in In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, focusing on how each reflects themes about changing one's life for the better....
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In the following essay, Hannah examines the ten stories in Back in the World and compares the collection to In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, concluding that, while the two share some subje...
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In the following excerpt, McGraw explores the moral resonance of the stories collected in The Night in Question.
Tobias Wolff frequently uses narrative passages to give dignity to his characters, alth...
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In the following review, Orodenker and Everman assert that In the Garden of the North American Martyrs illuminates the essence of human emotion with a provocative and original voice.
In the Garden of ...
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In the following excerpt, Flower offers a mixed assessment of In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, lamenting Wolff's use of both physical and mental “gratuitous cruelty” i...
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In the following excerpt, DePietro offers a negative assessment of Back in the World, calling the collection trendy and shallow.
Tobias Wolff, a recent PEN/Faulkner Award winner, writes the kind of sh...
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In the following review, Sutcliffe calls Hunters in the Snow dispiriting and remarks that the stories' individual strengths are overshadowed by the collection's dejected tone.
Short stor...
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In the following essay, Hannah reviews each of the ten stories in Back in the World and compares the collection to In the Garden of the North American Martyrs. Hannah concludes that, while the two sha...
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In the following essay, Hannah reviews several stories that have appeared in anthologies and magazines but that Wolff has yet to include in a collection of his short fiction.
Introduction
When I sit d...
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In the following essay, Kelly uses Wolff's short story “Say Yes” to help delineate the nature of a deconstructive approach to literature, as opposed to a sociological-contextualis...
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In the following essay, Scofield argues that realism and experimentalism in literature are not mutually exclusive concepts.
What is the best way to get a critical purchase on the stories of Tobias Wol...
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In the following review of Back in the World Eder says that Wolff “writes with a lavish display of skill.”
The land of disquiet explored by a segment of American fiction is prosperous, d...
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In the following review, Glasser praises Back in the World for its candor and poignancy.
Reading a good short story is like falling in love. Some quirk, some strangeness, some difference, piques your ...
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In the following essay, Simpson traces the recurrence of certain moral questions throughout In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, The Barracks Thief, and Back in the World.
People in Tobias Wol...
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In the following interview, originally published in Contemporary Literature, spring 1990, Wolff discusses his approach to the writing and revision of the title story “In the Garden of the North...
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In the following review of The Night In Question, Eder discusses how Wolff handles the subject childhood and adolescence.
Like Antaeus, the mythological giant who was invincible as long as his feet to...
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In the following review of The Night in Question, Stone remarks on Wolff's moral perspective and the religious overtones in his work.
The work of Tobias Wolff provides a blend of satisfactions ...
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In the following interview, Wolff discusses short fiction as a genre and also describes his approach to writing a short story.
Short stories, like poems, demand a lot from their readers. Novels may be...
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In the following essay, Hannah studies each of the twelve stories that compose In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, focusing on how each reflects themes about changing one's life for th...
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One of the main aspects of a story that truly keeps our attention is character. A person is more likely to enjoy, maintain interest in, or be more intimately engaged with a story if they can relate t...
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Tobias Wolff
Tobias (Jonathan Ansell) Wolff
